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Podcast

8. The Spirit of 1936

Episode 8 of Fragile Juggernaut places us back in the critical juncture of 1936: the final year of Roosevelt’s first term in office. What were FDR’s re-election prospects as workers’ insurgencies erupted from below and as capital waited in vain for the courts to demolish the Wagner Act? What did this juncture mean for the CIO and its relationship to electoral politics? Episode 8 dives into these questions and surveys the evolving links between the CIO, leftwing intellectuals in the Roosevelt administration, and the Democratic Party. Featuring special guest Samir Sonti, an assistant professor at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. 

Featured music: Franklin D. Roosevelt's Back Again (The New Lost City Ramblers); Old Age Pension Check (The New Lost City Ramblers); Farmer-Labor Train (Woody Guthrie); Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt (McKinley Peebles)

Fragile Juggernaut is a Haymarket Originals podcast exploring the history, politics, and strategic lessons of the Congress of Industrial Organizations and the rank and file insurgency that produced it. Support Fragile Juggernaut on Patreon and receive our exclusive bimonthly newsletter, full of additional insights, reading recommendations, and archival materials we’ve amassed along the way. 

Support us on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/FragileJuggernaut/posts

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Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.

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This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Unions of Our Own: Eight Building Blocks to Change Work and the World by Daniel Gross, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.

Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.

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Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, we get an inside look at how the baristas at Blanco, in San Antonio Texas, win a union with help from Starbucks Workers United. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.

This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including No Neutrals There: US Labor, Zionism, and the Struggle for Palestine by Jeff Schuhrke, which is 20% Off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.

Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.

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Welcome to Heat the Ground Up, an oral history of Starbucks Workers United. In this episode, we’ll hear workers fight for material gains and develop a concrete understanding of how union organizing can counteract exploitation and change workers’ lives. Over the course of the series, we’ll follow one of the most important labor fights in a generation through the voices and perspectives of the workers who organized it from the ground up.

This podcast is a Haymarket Originals production. Visit haymarketbooks.org to find indispensable radical books, podcasts, virtual events, and other political education resources, including Song for a Hard-Hit People: A Memoir of Antiracist Solidarity from a Coal Miner’s Daughter by Beth Howard, which is 10% off online. Please also consider joining the Haymarket book club. It’s one of the best ways to support Haymarket, and help fund projects like this one.

Our podcast host is Clarissa Redwine. You can find more of her work at strike.kitchen. This entire oral history is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License. The music was composed by Michael T. Simonelli over at the podcast production company Charts and Leisure.